


The Bludgeonings of Chance

by QueenBee2175



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (former) Religious Castiel, Abusive John Winchester, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst and Humor, Anxiety, Cas is in a bad place, Castiel Needs a Hug, Castiel Whump, Dean Needs A Hug, Dean is Bad at Feelings, Dean is kind of a slut, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Emotionally Hurt Castiel, F/F, F/M, Hurt Dean, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, My First Fanfic, POV Alternating, Parental Dean, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Physical Abuse, Religious Communes, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Tags May Change, Tattooed Castiel, Tattooed Dean, Tattoos, Virgin Castiel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 18:19:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6621286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenBee2175/pseuds/QueenBee2175
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Castiel was almost tempted to pray to a god he was no longer sure he believed in.<br/>Then, mentally shaking himself, he sighed and glanced around once more. He hoped he’d survive this – he’d really like to start his classes first at least. <br/>Then he reached up to the branch and gripped it tight."</p><p>or</p><p>Where Castiel attends college and attempts to experience 'normal' life after escaping from the religious commune he was raised in, but struggles to overcome his haunting past. Dean just wants to actually be a kid for a while, even while dealing with scars of his own.</p><p> </p><p>(*note: the title is a borrowed line from the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley. It's amazing and one of my favorites and if you haven't read it then you totally should go read it right now)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bludgeonings of Chance

**Author's Note:**

> This is my very first fanfic so I hope you enjoy it! I wrote this in a lot of ways as a sort of catharsis, since a lot of what Castiel goes through in particular is very similar to my own past experiences, especially in struggling with depression. I would love to hear all of your comments, but please try to make them positive. I'll try to post on a fairly regular basis. Thanks for reading!!!

“I’m never going to survive this.”

That’s the first thing that Castiel can honestly remember thinking about moving into the dorms and starting college life. There was chaos, noise, hell, there was even the _smell_ of sweaty guys that shouldn’t possibly be so pungent before the semester even started and yet was offensively pervasive. Castiel felt uncomfortable and out of place.

He vaguely wondered if the girls’ dorms were any better, but having lived in close quarters with both girls and boys before, he knew it likely only differed in being better decorated. He was carrying an armful of boxes – all his worldly belongings – and preparing to make his way down the hallway towards room 201, the last door on the left.

Getting there would be like walking through a minefield of randomly placed boxes, precarious stacks of odds and ends, and noisy people darting in and out of rooms, trying to unload their stuff while simultaneously socializing with new roommates and acquaintances. Crying mothers, obtrusively helpful fathers, and annoying younger siblings only added to the confusion and din.

He shuddered, swallowed nervously, then squared his shoulders and began to make as much of a beeline as he could towards the end of the hall.

Castiel was quiet, always had been. Coming from an extremely religious family, this was, if he was being honest with himself, his first true foray into ‘the real world’. Television, movies, certain books and styles of music – make that anything even remotely from the sphere of pop culture – were all as foreign and unknown to him as if they were in another language.

_“Except it would be far easier to grasp if it actually_ were _another language, I’ve never had any problem with those,”_ Castiel thought ruefully.

He was in fact fluent in 12 languages, spoke passably in several more, and had enough of a working knowledge of several dead languages that he could roughly read the contents of ancient texts – an activity he found most enjoyable to pass the time.

He overheard several meatheads laughing sophomorically about a welcome to the new semester party featuring a beer pong tournament at a frat house later.

_“Is that what these people do as enjoyable pastimes?”_

A nerf ball suddenly whizzed by his head and he flinched, the smallest box he had hazardously balanced on the stack in his arms falling to the floor with a thud.

At least he was right in front of his open door at the end of the long hallway. He quickly ducked inside to drop his load and then scurried back out to retrieve his errant box, hoping desperately to limit his interactions with, well, anyone.

It’s not that Castiel hated people or even generally disliked them. On the contrary, he was in love with humanity and all its incredible accomplishments and innate diversity. He found people-watching fascinating and enriching, though coming from his sheltered upbringing many behaviors, references, and activities escaped him.

It’s not that he considered himself shy, more that he was an introvert to his core. Observing people was one thing, but connecting with them quite another. Everyone around him seemed to have no problem holding easy conversations and creating fast friendships on even the most mundane of shared interests, but the idea of having to engage himself made anxiety well suffocatingly within him.

No he didn’t hate people, though people certainly seemed to hate him.

Even from a young age Castiel had never really fit in. He told he was too curious and disobedient by his parents and the council, and too strange and rigid by his Brothers and Sisters. He had always struggled to find that balance that would allow him to be viewed as anything more than at best an affectionately tolerated pet or at worst an unnerving freak.

With a pang he realized that, unkind as it had been, he’d never bear their commentary or scrutiny ever again.

It wasn’t his fault that his attempts to observe people in an effort to understand them was interpreted as some sort of creepy voyeurism unhelped by his piercing, intense blue eyes and his unfortunate tendency not to blink for long periods.

He had been told when he looked for too long at someone it was like being an ant under a microscope.

 He didn’t mean to make anyone uncomfortable – he just, as his elder brother Gabriel had so kindly put it, “lacked the ability to read any and all social cues”.

His confusion as he tried to puzzle his way through pretty much every interaction apparently also read as totally blank to the person with whom he was interacting. A hard-to-read stonewall that only exacerbated his intense gaze.

Castiel sighed and chewed his lip as he remembered what another brother, Lucifer had called that look: “A mask of angelic constipation”.

Great.

He really was only seeking to understand but he needed a teacher, and had yet to find someone patient and willing enough to put up with him for long.

It was little wonder then that introverted Castiel dreaded any interaction with the boisterous individuals he’d passed on his way to his dorm room who’d just seemed so… _normal_.

He’d tried for haughty disdain for those types of people in the past – and sometimes that perspective still leaked into his thoughts and observations – but really he was just lonely.

He desperately wished for a friend, for anyone to be patient enough to get to know the real him that he so rarely felt comfortable enough to show anyone.

Actually, now that he thought about it, he didn’t remember _ever_ feeling so perfectly at ease with someone that he’d revealed any of his deepest self.

_“I’m not even sure I’d know who that person is anyways.”_

Castiel had spent so long simply trying to belong that he could no longer tell which parts of himself were carefully molded acts to please others and which were genuinely him.

Perhaps he’d have the time to figure that out here at college. His single room at the end of the hallway would hopefully prove to be a quiet place where he could go about his schoolwork and personal reflections in peace.

Suddenly there was shouting and he was shoved roughly backwards, falling around to his hands and knees and startling him from his reverie. Castiel realized he’d been standing in his doorway for nearly ten minutes, lost in his thoughts and staring blankly off into space.

In an instant, he had instinctively gathered himself for the impending confrontation, hoping it wouldn’t become physical and stood and turned to face his attacker.

Which apparently was a ratty green leather couch.

The end that had hit him had been forced through his doorway in what he could only assume was an attempt to work it into the room across the hall, though it now appeared to be firmly lodged at an awkward angle between his doorjamb and the wall opposite, effectively blocking both his view of the hall and his exit from his room.

How the people responsible had even gotten it down the hallway in the first place would forever remain a mystery to him.

“Benny you asshole I told you to _twist_ this damn thing not lift it or whatever the fuck you were doing!” Castiel heard a gruff voice call out.

He heard another man drawl back in a deep southern accent, “Brother, I won’t hesitate to knock some sense inta that pretty lil’ head a yours even if I did just meet you, and I’ll even wait until your lady friend comes back to do it too. ‘Sides we _have_ to lift one side to make it fit. The very least _you_ could do is actually put your back into it ‘stead of standin’ there bitchin’ at me.”

“Did you just call me lazy?!” The first voice spluttered indignantly. “Screw you man!” Though Castiel could hear the other guy’s grin.

“And Jo is soooo not my _lady friend_. More like the annoying little sister I never wanted. I think she’d kill me and then you if she heard you say that,” he snickered, “though I think she used to have a crush on me when we were younger. Her mom’s a good friend of the family and she invited herself along to help me move in is all.”

“Well we won’t be doing much of that if we can’t move this damn couch. Come on _push_!” Benny replied

Castiel heard grunting and saw the offending piece of furniture shift slightly and then stop again amidst cursing from what sounded like the two men attempting to wrangle it.

With a sigh he realized he’d be there for a while and decided to leave them to it and begin unpacking his own few belongings.

As he put the brand new sheets and pillows on the bed and placed the unopened packages of various school supplies in his desk, he determinedly ignored his lack of personal items and instead focused on hanging up his meager selection of newly purchased clothing.

He wouldn’t allow the rather painful reason for _why_ he had nothing from his home darken his thoughts and distract him from finishing unpacking. Though in fact, he realized with surprise he had nothing more to unpack.

As he looked around the rather sparse space he’d inhabit for the next year or so, he resolved to start thinking of the place as calmingly austere rather than depressingly impersonal and empty.

The room was on the corner of the second floor of a recently renovated three-story building that had originally served as a studio for the arts. That meant that the rooms were parceled out in uneven sizes, some only large enough to be singles, others big enough to accommodate up to four people with room left over for a living area (clearly the case for the room across the hall that the couch would – hopefully – come to reside in).

Each possessed at least one large, floor to ceiling window as well as the beautiful, original hardwood floors. However, the cheap construction that had been employed to turn the building into a dormitory detracted slightly from what was otherwise a lovely space.

He’d chosen this dorm over the others available precisely for its aesthetic and its history.

The building itself had two identical, opposing wings branching off from a large center atrium that was divided between a common room and a dining area. Each wing T-d off, and at the ends of the long hallways were the staircases that led to the upper floors. The East wing was the boy’s wing and the West, the girls.

On each floor, across from the stairs were the common bathrooms and showers and, upon exiting the stairwell one could choose to turn left or right down the hallway. Castiel’s room was in the southeast most corner of the building.

To the right of the doorway of his room was a narrow if deep closet and straight ahead was one such large window that overlooked a quiet walkway currently bustling with students carrying boxes for move-in day and shadowed by a long line of large trees.

Past the closet was another large window that looked out onto a smaller of one of the campus’ many quads on which students lounged in the sun. His bed sat in the corner between the two windows while the empty bed that would have been for a roommate had he not requested a single sat in the corner to the left of the doorway.

His desk rested at the foot if his bed overlooking the quad, while a small sink and mirror adorned the wall across from it.

It was certainly more of a bedroom than he’d ever had before and though plain, it would do.

He risked a glance at his doorway, and finding it still blocked, instead crossed to the window opposite the door and looked out. The walkway had finally begun to clear of people and Castiel opened it and leaned out, breathing in the fresh air.

He suspected he had such an idyllic view because he had elected to live in this dorm – which was in a peripheral location that made it rather socially inconvenient – rather than the majority of the other students living here who had been grumblingly assigned to it.

He breathed a sigh as he noticed that the noise outside his room had quieted considerably, and even the walkway below only held a few last stragglers. He risked a glance at his doorway; still blocked. People were probably further settling in or had headed to the student activities fair that was kicking off Welcome Week somewhere on one of the main quads on campus.

Castiel swallowed his disappointment that he would likely miss it completely now and sat heavily on the open window sill with his back against the frame and knees drawn to his chest, gazing out at what little of the campus he could see through the heavy foliage in front of him.

The branches of the trees were heavy and old, and, while beautiful, Castiel found himself cursing them for not only blocking his view but also for muffling the sound of music and revelry coming from the fair. In fact, one particularly offending limb extended towards him in such a way that it was always sorely in his eyesight no matter how he adjusted, mostly because it appeared to be so close that it fact –

_“Wait a minute,”_ he thought, narrowing his eyes.

He cocked his head and changed the angle at which he was looking at the tree, following the line of the branch all the way from the trunk to his right to where it arched above his head, straight across the window. It might just be possible.

He thanked the stars for his 6ft height and long, athletic limbs as he stood on the sill reaching upwards, and…yes, _yes!_ He easily grasped a thick part of the branch just before it curved away. It looked sturdy enough to hold his weight. Hopefully.

Castiel ducked back into his room and shrugged on his newly acquired beige trench. It was one of the few pieces of his new wardrobe he actually liked and thus elected to wear it despite the day being sunny and pleasantly warm.

He managed to force his bedroom door to shut completely and then locked it as he patted his pockets to make sure he had his keys, wallet and student ID. He then re-approached the window with trepidation and glanced outside.

All clear.

Fortunately, the windowsill was wide and extended nearly a foot outside, giving him enough room to stand on it while reaching behind himself to slide the window nearly shut, leaving a few inches.

_“Just in case I have to return this way,”_ he thought with an inward grimace.

Castiel surveyed his route carefully; if he could haul himself onto the branch above he could easily work his way to the trunk and from there it would be a simple matter of using the knots and smaller branches of the gnarled old oak to lower himself to the ground.

He was glad now that he’d never been able to listen when his mother and the council had chastised and punished him for climbing as high as he could in the trees of their community – _“commune,”_ he corrected himself.

Castiel was almost tempted to pray to a god he was no longer sure he believed in.

Then, mentally shaking himself, he sighed and glanced around once more. He hoped he’d survive this – he’d really like to start his classes first at least.

Then he reached up to the branch and gripped it tight.


End file.
